Many Kenyans will today be glued to TV sets, radios and social media platforms to listen to President Uhuru Kenyatta give an audit of his government, in the annual State of the Nation address.
With echoes of one he delivered four years ago when he shocked the nation by tabling a list of government officials, including Cabinet secretaries, linked to corruption cases, many Kenyans will be eager to hear his next step in the ongoing war on graft.
The 2015 State of the Nation address saw CSs Michael Kamau, Charity Ngilu, Davis Chirchir, Felix Koskei and Kazungu Kambi step aside because of financial scandals in their ministries.
Kenyans will today be waiting to hear if the President will make a similar bold statement about graft when he delivers his address to the joint sitting of Parliament.
Speculation has been rife that he could use the speech to purge his Cabinet of members who have been implicated in various corruption scandals.
In the past month, several Cabinet secretaries have record statements with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations in connection with the Arror and Kimwarer dams projects.
The investigations are seen as part of the President’s pledge to eradicate corruption in public offices.
Speaking to Kenyans during a visit to Namibia two weeks ago, Uhuru made one of his most ruthless anti-graft statements yet, saying he would spare neither his family members nor close political allies in the war.
“If you are corrupt we will fight you. You can be my brother or my sister or my closest political ally but if you are corrupt we will fight you,” he said.
Unlike the 2015 Cabinet purge when the Jubilee family was largely reading from the same script, the party is now sharply divided, with Deputy President William Ruto’s allies reading malice and politics in the corruption investigations and pronouncements by the President on the vice.
Some politicians allied to the DP have angrily dismissed the investigations as aimed at frustrating their man’s plans to succeed Uhuru in the 2022 elections.
The situation in Jubilee has not been helped by the close working relationship between the President and Opposition leader Raila Odinga, the product of the a post-election deal that ended the 2017 presidential election dispute.
Ruto and his allies have never hidden their suspicion of the Handshake, accusing Raila of entering into the deal with a hidden agenda to wreck the ruling party and advance his own political interests.
The question in the minds of Kenyans is how high the President is willing to go in the corruption probe and prosecutions and if he is willing to sacrifice Jubilee to reach his goal of eradicating graft.